Look Who’s Back

Look Who’s Back

by Timur Vermes Translated by Jamie Bulloch

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Original German title:

Er ist wieder da (Published in 2012)

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Thanks to Quercus for sending me Look Who’s Back. Alas, it did not make it on the short list neither for the official IFFP list nor for our Shadow list, but still, I personally think this is a wonderful book and certainly the most hilarious literary novel I have read for years!Imagine: it’s 2011, and none other than Hitler, you can have guessed from the awesome book cover, wakes up in his uniform on a vacant lot in Germany, where kids are playing soccer. He’s totally confused by his surroundings, the absence of war noises and scenes. Seeing newspapers on a nearby stand he is shocked to discover he missed the last 66 years, and tries to catch up with what happened in between.
The guy running the newsstand thinks he is one of those actors doing a Hitler documentary, except that he is really good at it and even quite natural! He introduces him to people working in the world of theater and movie.
Hitler becomes eventually a YouTube sensation and goes beyond his discomfort and shock at our modern culture to use the mediasfor his propaganda, hoping to be able to lead again the country one day.

This is a very smart and most hilarious literary novel. Wow, I wondered on so many pages how the author got all these amazing ideas.

I understand how upsettingthis novel could be at some level, as yes there are a few passages about the Jewsand a lot more on the overwhelming Turkish presence in current Germany. His analysis and critique of twenty-first century German politics can certainly not leave anyone indifferent, to say the least… Not mentioning the topic of our planet overpopulation.
This may be why the IFFP did not dare accept it on their shortlist. WWII is a very painful topic, talk to me about it: like most if not all French people, my own family had very close experience with forced labor in Germany and even concentration camps. Still, I think literature is literature and has the leeway to treat a monster with laughter.
And I believe anyway the point of this novel is the critique of our current modern world, and sometimes its stupid and contradictory elements, seen through Hitler’s eyes. As the translator highlights it so well at the end of the book,

Indeed, Hitler is totally confused by what he sees around him, and the way he interpretsit is so irresistibly funny.
As early as chapter 1, he takes a cycling helmet for a

protective helmet, which appeared to have sustained some serious damage given the number of holes in it.p.8

The passage on leaf blowers (chapter 10) is very good too, as well as his comments on women picking up dog turds…

I enjoyed especially how Hitler discovers the world of cell phones, ringtones, computers, and the internet.

Before long I established that I kept arriving at the same address: a proto-Germanic reference work called Vikipedia, an easily recognizable compound of “encyclopedia” and those ancient Germans with exploration in their blood, the Vikings.p.98

His satire is directed to the mediasin all their forms, with its ridiculous cult of personality. Here is what he thinks about TV programs:

Who would choose to watch trash like this? Untermenschen, perhaps, who can barely read and write, but besides them?p.58

On a lighter side, you should go with him to Oktober Fest! (chapter 31)

To help you understand some passages that may be obscure, if you have not kept up too closely with WWII history and current Germany, there are excellent notes at the end of the book on major political figures as well as a few inside references.

The translationwas so good I was never really aware I was reading a book in translation. As a literary translator myself, I know too well the aim of a good translator is to convey so well the text that no one even thinks about you.

VERDICT: Very smart satire of our modern world, seen through the eyes of Hitler. Sometimes provocative, always hilarious, one of the funniest literary novels.